Catalan
Overview Catalan is a Western Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain. It is the only official language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia (where the language is known as Valencian). It also has semi-official status in the Italian commune of Alghero. It is also spoken in the eastern strip of Aragon, in some villages of Region of Murcia called Carche and in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France. These territories are often called Països Catalans or "Catalan Countries". Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees. 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, culminating in the early 1900s. History By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the eastern end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south. From the 8th century onwards the Catalan counts extended their territory southwards and westwards at the expense of the Muslims, bringing their language with them. This process was given definitive impetus with the separation of the County of Barcelona from the Carolingian Empire in 988. In the 11th century, documents written in macaronic Latin begin to show Catalan elements, with texts written almost completely in Romance appearing by 1080. Old Catalan shared many features with Gallo-Romance, diverging from Old Occitan between the 11th and 14th centuries. During the 11th and 12th centuries the Catalan rulers expanded up to north of the Ebro river, and in the 13th century they conquered the Land of Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The city of Alghero in Sardinia was repopulated with Catalan speakers in the 14th century. The language also reached Murcia, which became Spanish-speaking in the 15th century. In the Low Middle Ages, Catalan went through a golden age, reaching a peak of maturity and cultural richness. By the 15th century, the city of Valencia had become the sociocultural center of the Crown of Aragon, and Catalan was present all over the Mediterranean world. During this period, the Royal Chancery propagated a highly standardized language. Catalan was widely used as an official language in Sicily until the 15th century, and in Sardinia until the 17th. During this period, the language was what Costa Carreras terms "one of the 'great languages' of medieval Europe". With the union of the crowns of Castille and Aragon (1479), the use of Spanish gradually became more prestigious and marked the start of the decline of the Catalan. Starting in the 16th century, Catalan literature came under the influence of Spanish, and the urban and literary classes became bilingual. With the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), Spain ceded the northern part of Catalonia to France, and soon thereafter the local Catalan varietiescame under the influence of French, which in 1700 became the sole official language of the region. Shortly after the French Revolution (1789), the French First Republic prohibited official use of, and enacted discriminating policies against, the regional languages of France, such as Catalan, Alsatian, Breton, Occitan, Flemish, and Basque. The decline of Catalan continued in the 16th and 17th centuries. The defeat of the pro-Habsburg coalition in the War of Spanish Succession (1714) initiated a series of laws which, among other centralizing measures, imposed the use of Spanish in legal documentation all over Spain. According to the Statistical Institute of Catalonia, in 2013 the Catalan language is the second most commonly used in Catalonia, after Spanish, as a native or self-defining language: 7% of the population self-identifies with both Catalan and Spanish equally, 36.4% with Catalan and 47.5% only Spanish. In 2003 the same studies concluded no language preference for self-identification within the population above 15 years old: 5% self-identified with both languages, 44.3% with Catalan and 47.5 with Spanish. In order to promote use of Catalan, the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalonia's official Autonomous government) spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. In Andorra, Catalan has always been the sole official language. Since the promulgation of the 1993 constitution, several policies favouring Catalan have been enforced, like Catalan medium education. On the other hand, there are several language shift processes currently taking place. In the Northern Catalonia area of France, Catalan has followed the same trend as the other minority languages of France, with most of its native speakers being 60 or older (as of 2004). Catalan is studied as a foreign language by 30% of the primary education students, and by 15% of the secondary. The cultural association La Bressola promotes a network of community-run schools engaged in Catalan language immersion programs. In Alicante province, Catalan is being replaced by Spanish and in Alghero by Italian. There are also well ingrained diglossic attitudes against Catalan in the Valencian Community, Ibiza, and to a lesser extent, in the rest of the Balearic islands. Catalan excerpt from Wikipedia article "Català" El català (denominació oficial a Catalunya, a les Illes Balears, a Andorra, a la ciutat de l'Alguer i tradicional a Catalunya Nord) o valencià (denominació oficial al País Valencià i tradicional al Carxe) és una llengua romànica parlada per més d'onze milions de persones, a Catalunya, al País Valencià (tret d'algunes comarques de l'interior), les Illes Balears, Andorra, la Franja de Ponent (a l'Aragó), la ciutat de l'Alguer (a l'illa de Sardenya), la Catalunya del Nord,8 el Carxe (un petit territori de Múrcia poblat per immigrats valencians),910 i en petites comunitats arreu del món (entre les quals destaca la de l'Argentina, amb 195.000 parlants).11 Té nou milions de parlants, dels quals quasi la meitat ho són de llengua materna; el seu domini lingüístic, amb una superfície de 68.730 km² i 13.529.127 d'habitants (2009),12 inclou 1.687 termes municipals. Com a llengua materna, es parlada per quatre milions de parlants (29% de la població del territori lingüístic), repartits 2.263.000 a Catalunya,13 1.321.000 al País Valencià14 i 417.000 a les Illes Balears.15 Com les altres llengües romàniques, el català prové del llatí vulgar que parlaven els romans que s'establiren a Hispània durant l'edat antiga. La normativa del català és establerta, d'una manera general, per l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans, que pren com a base l'ortografia, la gramàtica i el diccionari elaborats per Pompeu Fabra i Poc, i per a les variants específiques del valencià, per l'Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, que pren com a base les Normes de Castelló, és a dir, l'ortografia de Pompeu Fabra però més adaptada a la pronunciació del català occidental i als trets que caracteritzen les varietats valencianes. El català té cinc grans dialectes (valencià, nord-occidental, central, balear i rossellonès) que juntament amb l'alguerès, es divideixen fins a vint-i-una varietats i s'agrupen en dos grans blocs: el català occidental i el català oriental. Les propostes normatives permeten reduir les diferències entre aquests dialectes en el català estàndard des del punt de vista gramatical, fonètic i de lèxic. El català és una llengua de transició entre les llengües iberoromàniques i les llengües gal·loromàniques, encara que antigament fos molt pròxima a l'occità, amb qui comparteix origen i grup: l'occitanoromànic. Al llarg dels darrers segles, la major part dels dialectes del català han rebut una forta influència del castellà a l'Estat espanyol i a l'Estat Andorrà, del francès a la Catalunya del Nord i també a Andorra, i de l'italià i del sard a l'Alguer, que hi ha deixat empremta en forma de nou vocabulari i noves expressions. El grau d'ús i d'oficialitat del català varia molt segons el territori, que va des de la nul·la oficialitat a França a ser l'únic idioma oficial a Andorra, passant per la cooficialitat en tres comunitats autònomes espanyoles. L'ordre estàndard de les frases és Subjecte-Verb-Objecte, encara que pugui canviar en certs tipus de frases com les oracions interrogatives i algunes relatives. La morfologia del català és similar a la de la resta de llengües romàniques: relativament poques flexions; dos gèneres, cap cas (excepte en els pronoms personals, on encara romanen vestigis de la declinació llatina), i distinció entre singular i plural. Els adjectius també es flexionen segons el gènere i el nombre. La prosòdia presenta un accent prosòdic que pot ser marcat per mitjà d'accent gràfic. La llengua té una varietat vocàlica mitjana, amb vuit sons vocàlics diferents. Una característica pròpia del català és la manera com es forma el passat perifràstic, un temps verbal singular que combina el verb anar com a auxiliar i l'infinitiu (en altres llengües del món aquesta combinació té un valor de futur). Video Category:Romance Languages Category:Indo-European Languages Category:Europe Category:Spain Category:Catalonia Category:Andorra Category:France